So everyone currently planning a virtual rollout of Microsoft Office on Windows Server 2019 while keeping the option open to use Office 365 ProPlus would be well advised to remember the option of add-on licenses. Although it currently gives users access to Office Professional Plus, it only does so as a local copy for the licensed user – which means that provisioning on a terminal server is not compliant with the licensing terms. It is essential to be particularly careful if the Microsoft 365 From SA license was purchased. It is certainly not compliant to provision Office 2019 on the server instead of Office 365 ProPlus – at least without purchasing Office on-premises licenses. But the licensing requirements might certainly change, as the service will not be available until 2019.

At present, Windows Virtual Desktop does not have a solution for thin clients – which based on the momentary license conditions are only equipped with a VDA license. Interested parties should exercise particular caution when dealing with licenses purchased via CSP, as the licenses that are available in this program only permit virtualization of the operating system on servers hosted in Azure.Ī disadvantage currently associated with Windows Virtual Desktop is that the service is only available with Windows Enterprise licenses. Windows Virtual Desktop is optimized specifically to run with Office 365 ProPlus, which means that this service can also be used to provide a virtualized form of Office 365 ProPlus – albeit in the Microsoft Cloud.Īll of the provisioning options outlined above have technical and licensing consequences.įor instance, virtualization of Office 365 ProPlus within a virtual desktop requires not only an Office 365 ProPlus license and a RDS CAL, but also a Windows or VDA license – either with an active SA or an active subscription. Besides the benefits of a cloud service, it comes with another exciting feature, the Multi-User Windows 10 Experience that allows several users to ‘share’ one virtual desktop. Put simply, it is a virtual desktop environment for Windows and Office that is made available as a managed service in Azure.

The Azure service Windows Virtual Desktop – which will likely be available from 2019 – is another option, for the future at least. This means that Office 365 ProPlus can be combined with Windows Server 2019 by switching from a virtualized, remote application to a virtual desktop with a VDI environment.

So although it is not possible to virtualize Office 365 ProPlus directly on Windows Server 2019, there is certainly the option of using Windows Server 2019 to provision the Windows operating system – which in turn would support Office 365 ProPlus. While Windows Server 2019 is missing, the requirements do list the Windows operating system in a number of versions.

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